Movie Review: Red Tails

There’s an interesting comparison to be made between George Lucas’ Red Tails and Steven Spielberg’s War Horse. Both were passion projects for the founders of modern blockbuster filmmaking (in the case of Lucas, it was a pet project he’d developed for years) that allowed them to dabble in the classical Hollywood style of their matinee-packed youth. I think both movies failed to successfully revitalize old Hollywood storytelling, acting, and cheese for contemporary audiences, but at least Spielberg was consciously being old fashioned in his approach. With Lucas’ Red Tails, it feels like he genuinely thinks the ludicrous melodrama, tired clichés, cornball dialogue, 2-dimentional characterizations, and cloying sentimentality of the movie will still work for audiences. It’s as if he found an old war propaganda screenplay from the forties and decided to make it straight with the exception of some admittedly exciting CGI dogfight scenes. Well George, judging by all the unintentional laughter that accompanied the movie at the screening I attended, it’s safe to say that audiences aren’t going to fall for it. Maybe the highly publicized retirement from blockbuster filmmaking you made this week is a good thing.

The film is a based on the true story of the Tuskegee Airmen, an all African American team of fighter pilots in World War II. Obviously, they faced a great deal of prejudice, but proved more than capable of shooting Nazis out of the sky alongside their honky contemporaries. It’s not a terrible concept for an awards pandering war flick, but Lucas, screenwriter John Ridley, and director Anthony Hemingway don’t quite seem to know what to do with it. They pile together a hodgepodge of pilots who go by names like Lightning, Joker, and Easy and have personalities about as deep as their nicknames. One ends up falling in love with a local Italian girl by the airbase (he doesn’t speak Italian and she doesn’t speak English. Awwwww), one ends up in a POW camp, and one briefly becomes an alcoholic from the pressure. Then there are the superior officers played by Terence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. who are saintly figures arguing for racial equality to shoot down Germans and face resistance from harsh white generals who may as well be twirling mustaches and tying to damsels to railroad tracks based on how human they seem. The characters each have their own insubstantial subplot with little in the way of an emotional arc. I guess we’re supposed to assume we’ve seen a narrative by the time the credits roll, but honestly so little of worth actually happens that it comes as a shock when the movie mercifully ends.

It’s worth noting that Lucas didn’t officially direct this movie. That “honour” fell onto TV veteran Anthony Hemingway. However, given how prominently Lucas’ name features in the credits and the fact that Hemingway usually works as a hired gun, I think it’s safe to assume who was actually in charge. I suppose having Hemingway act as a go-between with the actors was a plus since the performances are slightly better than in the Star Wars prequels, but this is clearly a late career Lucas movie-through-and-through and that isn’t a good thing. There was a time when Lucas seemed interested in crafting narratives and creating characters that audiences found compelling (let’s not forget that he made the rather wonderful ensemble piece American Graffiti), but that time has long since passed. Now it’s as if he looks at storytelling as a formula he has to follow to get to the action scenes that interest him. You can see how he thinks he’s pushing buttons that will make us empathize with characters or be amused by them, but it never works. Cuba Gooding Jr. is given a Sherlock Holmes pipe to place in his mouth thoughtfully any time a decision must be made and while that might seem like a reasonable idea in a storyboard, in practice it’s hilariously unnatural. The scenes of racial tension amount to little more than white people looking shocked that the African American characters are capable of even tying their shoes let alone piloting an aircraft. Sure, that level of bigotry occurred at the time and should be represented in the movie, but it’s presented here as naively as it would have been in a 40s melodrama where even having characters address race seemed transgressive. Not a moment of Red Tails feels genuine, which is a bit of a problem in a true life story.

Now, it should be noted that the aerial combat sequences in Red Tails are well done. I’m certain that’s what interested Lucas in the project, if only because footage of dogfights from old movies is what inspired his Star Wars space battles. The scenes are well conceived and cut together, epic in scale yet presented cleanly and clearly. However, the scenes were also obviously constructed entirely in a computer and never feel like they are really happening. They’re easy to appreciate as a work of digital craftsmanship, but never draw the audience in like they should. That’s kind of true of the film as a whole. You’ll watch it completely detached, aware of what beats are supposed to move and excite you without ever getting caught up in the drama. It’s almost like watching a really expensive pre-visualization waiting for a filmmaker to come in and bring it to life. That’s probably as far into production as Lucas was willing to let his imagination take him on Red Tails and it’s a shame that his team of collaborators never pointed out how to turn his ideas into an actual movie. I know I’m being really hard on George Lucas and trust me, as a child who group up sleeping in Star Wars sheets, no one would be happier to report that the guy is back on form. Sadly, the interesting young director from the ’70s seemed to have disappeared somewhere in the middle of his second career as an action figure manufacturer. Lucas claims that he will abandon blockbusters after Red Tails and return to the low budget personal filmmaking that kicked off his career. I would be ecstatic if George Lucas the filmmaker were to suddenly make a return from decades in populist exile. However, it’s unlikely that anyone who supervised this manipulative tripe still has a passion for personal expression left in them.

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